barry lyndon_kubrick's cinema of disparity

8/3/2019 Barry Lyndon_Kubrick's Cinema of Disparity

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Barry Lyndon: Kubrick's Cinema of DisparityAuthor(s): Thomas Allen NelsonReviewed work(s):Source: Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Winter, 1979), pp.39-51Published by: Rocky Mountain Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1347320 .

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Barry Lyndon:Kubrick'sCinemaof Disparityby ThomasAllenNelson*

When Thackeray in the 1840's wrote The Memoirs of BarryLyndon, Esq., he did so during a period of experimenting with theaesthetics of parody. While poking fun at the sentimentalities of thefirst person confessional novel, a form already worn out by Defoe andridiculed by Fielding, Thackeray toyed with fictive forms and point ofview in an age no longer impressed with an 18thcentury addiction todecorum in language and behavior; the language of good sense wasbeing replacedby a fascination with the various forms and dynamics oflanguage and thought as a means for exploring complex modes ofperception. In Barry Lyndon (1844), Thackeray has its first personnarrator reveal sides of his nature which remain, to the end, personallyunexplored. Barry's self-exposure becomes complete only in thenovel's concluding chapters and coincides with a complete absorptionin his own inventions, ones which earlier stood as studied responses tothe accidents of fortune and his ambition for social rank.The "esquire"in the novel's title may be Thackeray's initial irony.We come away from the novel realizing that early in his careerThackeray set out to examine levels of social and psychologicalunderstanding through the manipulation of such stylistic distancingdevices as point of view and disparities between forms of language andperception. By the time of Vanity Fair (1847) and its style of authorialintrusion reminiscent of such 18thcenturyfictionalists as Fielding andSterne, Thackeray undercuts completely the authority of characterand plot and, in the process, growing and alternative 19th centuryviews of the novel as psychological or social history. Such a fictionalstrategy invites the reader to recognize, if not revel in, the variousdisparities between the novel's apparent"content"and its form, and toappreciate the artist'sorder of perception as existing apart from that ofthe many characters who inhabit his vanity fair. More emphatically*THOMAS ALLEN NELISON s a professor of English at San Diego State University. He teaches courses inShakespeare and Renaissance drama, Nabokov and contemporary fiction, and film criticism. He haspublished a book on Shakespearean comedy and recently has published several articles dealing withcontemporary film and film aesthetics. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Film Criticism and currentlyis working on a book-length study of Stanley Kubrick.EDITOR NOTE: The readers of this article might also be interested in reading "Kubrick's Vanity Fair." byRobert Bledsoe in Rocky Mouttain Review Volume 31. Number 2. pages 96-99.

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than in Barry Lyndon we realize that the hero of VanityFair(A NovelWithout a Hero) can be only the artist whose identity elusively peepsout from behind the narrator's satiric mask.Stanley Kubrick brings a 20th century cinematic intelligence tobear upon a 19th century novelist's interpretation, or reinvention, ofan 18thcentury form and subject. Demonstrating extraordinaryverveand control, Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) both interprets andtranscends an age through an exploration and dramatization ofvarious levels of understanding and perception, emotion and irony,comedy and tragedy, history and art. Through what I shall define as

his cinema of disparity, Kubrick, in Barry Lyndon, both summarizesand perfects two essential areas of conceptual and formal interestfound in his earlierfilms: namely, (1) the basicepistemological ironiesand disparitieswhich exist between the substance of humanexperienceand its expression through a myriad of expressive forms; and (2) therole of art in both revealing those disparities and pointing to theircreative as well as debilitating effects.In addition, I hope to demonstrate what Kubrick's severest critics(Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, for instance) too often fail toconsider: that, as Paul Schrader noted in another context ("Notes onFilm Noir," Film Comment [Spring 1972]), in important respects styledetermines thematic content in every film, and especially in BarryLyndon do we have an example of how through the organizationalclaims of film rhetoric (narrative and character structures, inparticular) and the visual/aural textures of film style (camera, mise-en-scene, editing, sound) a film works out its "content" aestheticallyrather than thematically. If Barry Lyndon says anything intelligent orintelligible to us, as I believe it does and Hans Feldmann in part hasargued ("Kubrickand His Discontents," Film Quarterly [Fall 1976]),it does so through a structure of disparitiescreated by Kubrick'sstrongcommitment to the formal demands of his medium.

iiThe distance created between the narrator(Michael Hordern) andthe world inhabited by the characters of Barry Lyndon points to aneasily discernible narrativedisparity. The narrator'svoice, steady anddeliberate in its ironic and sympathetic reflections on the rise and fallof Barry Lyndon (Ryan O'Neal), provides an omniscient, althoughlimited, detachment from the many ordinary-some petty and sometouching-strivings and struggles of the film'sprinciplecharacters. HeVOL. 33, NO. I (WINTER 1979)0


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creates in Part I an atmosphere of Comic fate and irony, while in PartII his comments become increasingly sympathetic and support agrowing mood of tragic irony. He alerts us to the patterns of fortuneand chance which the film's protagonists, especially Barryhimself, failto comprehend: Barry Lyndon in Part Iaccepts fortuity with confidentand unreflectedassurance, while in Part II the narratoranticipates forus the death of Barry's son and our hero's eventual ruin. In such amanner, Kubrick structures a narrative vise of irony and fate, onecomic in Part I and tragic in Part II, and reminds us of an historicalcontext from which no character, not even the narrator, can hope toescape. The titled "Epilogue," taken from a different context inThackeray's novel (Chapter I), stands as Kubrick's most obtrusiveintrusion into the film's historical level, one which usurps thenarrator's limited frame of reference in order to indicate time'sirrevocable obliteration of the private struggles of an entireera."Theyare all equal now," we read, as most of us shall be sometime in the 21 stcentury: except for those of us, like Kubrick, who seek to preserveinart a vision to withstand the rust of time.The narration, to include the titles to Parts I and II, either comesdirectly from or appears to be inspired by Thackeray's novel. ExceptKubrick, by not allowing Barry to tell his story as does Thackeray,further narrows the perceptual range of his main character; in thenovel, for instance, Barry makes observations and voices opinionsabout his historical and social milieu, even though his authority insuch matters is seriously challenged and even he admits to hisshortcomings as a "philosopher and historian." Rather than have his

protagonist tell his own story, as both Humbert and Alex are allowedto do respectively in Lolita (1962) and A Clockwork Orange (1971),Kubrick chooses a strategy which creates a more emphatic disparity innarrative perspectives. And, one must remember that Barry Lyndonrepresents Kubrick'sthird major film which adapts a novel using theconvention of an unreliable first person narrator. In both Nabokov'sLolita (1955) and Burgess' A Clockwork Orange (1962), the astutereader recognizes both Humbert and Alex as imposters who attemptto manipulate sympathies for their esoteric and at times viciousobsessions. Nabokov provides us with the narrative means totranscend Humbert's clever plea bargaining, while in ClockworkBurgess, through the confidences afforded by his "humble narrator,"puts us in the paradoxical position of defending the principle of freewill so that a young thug may fulfill a perverse aesthetic of violence.The narrator of Barry Lyndon stands as a more complexROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW 41


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refinement of Kubrick's earlier attempts at narrative disparity anddistancing. Although the narrator offers us a comfortable ironicdetachment from the struggle of Barry'sriseand fall, one whichallowsfor both scorn and pity, and provides an historical awareness whichstrengthens the sense of fate in the film, his omniscience is seriouslylimited. His is the voice of detachment and irony to be sure, a mixtureof 18thcentury urbanityand Thackerayeanamusementtoward an ageof dying ideals and shoddy corruptibility, but one confined within theplot level of the film. His superiority to Barry Lyndon and his milieuexists on a scale limited to the immediatehistoryand circumstances ofthe film's story. He has access to knowledge of Barry'sultimate ruinand sorrow, to the nuances of Barry'sromantic intriguewith Nora andQuin, to the complexities of 18th century European politics, and ingeneral to the simple dynamics of social intercourse. Beyond the levelof story, that rudimentaryurge to tell a tale, the narratorhas little ornothing to say. Significantly, hedoes not comment on most of what wesee and hear; he has no access to the cinematic order of which hisnarration is only a small part. The narrator appreciates some easyincongruities between individual aspiration and fate, but not thoselarger disparities communicated to the audience through Kubrick'scomplex manipulation of cinematic form and content.Within the two-part structure of Barry Lyndon, and its balancingof comic and tragic irony, Kubrick develops additional narrativecomment through his treatment of formalized activities in which hischaracters repeatedly engage. Among these dramatized motifs threestand out-dueling, card playing, and debt-paying-as Kubrick'smethod for deepening the film's content beyond that rendered in itsnarration. All three of these activities can be construed as dramaticextensions of fate and as supportive of a vision of an accidental anddisparate universe. As the charactersduel with one another over theephemera of love and personal honor, we comprehend their losingbattle with fate; as they idly pass the time playing cards, or attempt tofulfill personal ambition by cheating these games of chance, we realizetheir time is short and running out; and that while Barry and theChevalier(Patrick Magee) may cheat and win in one game, in a largerorder of reference, they inevitably must pay up. In Part II of the film,Kubrick isolates the piling up of debts and signing of bank drafts asanother ritual activity accomplished at a table, on two occasions withthree present (Barry, Lady Lyndon, the book-keeper) as in the gamesof ombre seen earlier, and again captures in microcosm a portrait ofthe film's thematic content.

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A careful look at how Kubrick shapes and patterns these threenarrativemotifs revealssomething in addition to the simple mechanicsof fate. The film's initial scene, shot from afar and expostulated uponby our avuncular and ironic narrator, tells of Barry'sfather, who, weare told, had a promising legal career cut short by the exigencies ofhonor in a duel over the purchase of some horses. Immediately we areforced to look at such human struggles from a distance, at oncecinematic and historical, and to note the disparities between form (aduel) and content (a human life sacrificed for a quarrel over horses).Barry'sduel with Quin (Leonard Rossiter), drawn out sufficiently byKubrick to capture the ritual and aesthetics of 18th century dueling,likewise has an inconsequential substance. Later, we and Barryrealizethat deception, not high drama and emotion, determined the duel'soutcome. In such ways is fate momentarilyforestalled and the forms ofthings manipulated. Barry, we soon see, learns his lessons well and insuccession manages to extricate himself from military and politicalentrapments which, although they may be games of state functioningon a scale grander in their formal properties than Barry's puerileinvolvement in a romantic triangle and a family's greed, also lack acorrespondingly noble substance. By the end of Part I, Barry hasdeveloped an art for dueling, and in their card playing he and theChevalier, amid disconnected wandering through the courts of 18thcentury Europe, manage to thrive on guile and good form.Significantly, Part I concludes with Barrymoving into a new sphere,amilieu with a separatecode of formal social language and gesture, onewhose artful splendor is symbolized by the name of Lyndon. Barrywoos Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) on a chillingly blue moonlitterraceoutside the gaming parlors of a Belgianspa and laterconfrontsher crippled husband with a newly acquiredconfidence and cruelty asthe old man rails and dies at his own card table. Part I reaches for aunity of structure and concept in this brilliant scene, as its static andcandlelit composition comes alive before our eyes, only to concludewith Sir Charles gasping for life and the narrator's unemotionalreading of the old man's obituary, reducing him in the process toanother item on the obscure rolls of history. We realize,as the readingof the obituary slowly drowns out and the screen cuts to black, hisesteemed name shortly will be usurped by Redmond Barry.For Kubrickin Part I of Barry Lyndon to dwell on the ironies in thecynical ambitions of Redmond Barry,not to forget those in that worldrepresented by the social and political contexts through which hejourneys, would be on the order of his films before Strangelove.ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW 43


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Kubrick, in several important episodes, indicates his full maturity asan artist when he complicates these ironies and, primarily throughvisual means, attempts to develop emotional nuances which for Barryand his world remain tragically unexplored. In the ribbon scene earlyin the film between Barryand Nora Brady (Gay Hamilton), Kubrickcaptures both the charm and triviality of sentimental love; he allowsthe scene to play itself out, to assert a temporal and emotionalintegrity, and consequently solicits a level of understanding which isinvolving as well as detaching. During the scene the performersembody familiar sentimental gestures, a subtle turn of the head orclosing of the eyes too studied to be profound, and following this scenethe narrator rushes to tell us of Nora's shallow emotional characterand the avarice of her family; yet Kubrick,within the scene's integrity,forces us to apprehend a world separate from the narrator'sperceptions and to acknowledge a fuller human content. Later, whenBarry sits by candlelight with the German girl and her baby (aremarkable performance by Diana Koerner) at another table, but inthis case not one for card playing, Kubrick again preserves a scene'sintegrity, allows it a full emotional and visual exposition, andcommunicates something other than just the irony of Barry's ies andposturings. He (and Ryan O'Neal) shows how simple and human it isfor Barryto become enveloped within the magic of his own inventionand how, for a briefmoment, we, too, sharethat magic. This charmingsequence completes itself the next morning with a closeup of the twolovers, heads together, in a tableau of bright sun and soft focus, as werelish its beauty and the charming innocence of its exaggeratedsentiment. That is something the film demands we see and feel, whilethe narrator's comments upon Barry'sdeparture (that, in effect, theyoung German girl's affections had been stormed a number of timesbefore Barry) provides an easy irony, a more emphatic verbalformulation of a chance meeting during war which stands apart fromthe scene'semotional and temporal reality. Kubrick asserts the validityof both reactions, no matter what subsequent disparities andcontradictions arise. For Barry Lyndon, this scene foreshadows hislater tragedy as he waits too long before exploring the emotionalpossibilities of his character. For us, it is a special experience madepossible by Kubrick's cinema of disparity.As card playing diminishes into an empty social gesture, debt-paying, one final duel, and an array of social rituals provide Kubrickwith appropriate narrativecontexts through which to mirrorin Part IIthe film's steady movement toward tragic irony. Time becomes a

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dominant theme in Part II, as when in its opening scene we witnessBarry's marriage to Lady Lyndon amid his new ambience of art andluxury, and the narratorprovides us with the first specified date in thefilm, June 15, 1773. Barry Lyndon, at his pinnacle, now will play alosing game with time. In very quick succession we witness a marriage,a birth, a marriage'sgradual dissolution, a birthday, Barry'sferventquest for peerage and another name, a second birthday, and the deathof Barry's only love, his son. One recalls the birthdays in 2001,touchingly disparate in their expression through the gargantua ofspace-age technology, and their ironic foreshadowing of Bowman'srebirth as star-child. In Barry Lyndon, Kubrick blends them with thefilm's treatment of other ritual activities and deepens the developmentof individual and historical disparities. A pattern of touching andtragic irony is captured at the sight of Bryan'swhite and ornate coffinleading his world in a procession of regal sorrow, transportedas it is bythe carriage which had been his birthday present the year before andwhich receives his body only after a riding accident with anotherbirthday present from his father. The boy's bed serves for two scenes,the first of charming innocence with father and son and Barry'sbedtime embellishments of his past, the last of Bryan'sdeath and ourrecognition of Barry'sloss as he breaks down in tears while telling thesame story. Bryan's innocence and beauty represent Barry's singleperception into something fine, something beyond his own ordinaryambitions. We are allowed to sense, through Kubrick'senforcementand compression of time, an emotional growth in Barry's characterbeyond that found in Thackeray, but one which tragically comes toolate; he no longer plays at sentiment as before, but now experiences atragedy so immense that no appropriate verbal language exists for itsfull expression. Kubrick lets us read it on his actors' faces.Four debt scenes provide Kubrick with another narrative devicefor capsulizing not only Barry'spersonal decline, but that of an entireera. We watch Lady Lyndon methodically and tirelessly sign hername,while Kubrick embodies in a single activity a culture's fall into themorass of its own trivialitiesand petty entanglements. As "H. Lyndon"increasingly becomes a dominant visual motif, Kubrick reminds usthat such documents are all that survive to account for the myriadpersonal realities of a given age. Barryand Lady Lyndon leave behindno art or beauty to express their personal sorrows and visions. Barry'shope for futurity, his son, dies, as do his ambitions in a tangle of debtsand writs.Kubrick climaxes the film's use of ritual activities for conceptualROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW 45


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and emotional expansion of narrative content with the final duelbetween Barryand Lord Bullingdon (Leon Vitali). Again, although inmore extensive terms than in Part I, Kubrick draws out a scene andpreservesits integrity; again, he points to complex disparitiesbetweenformal properties and content. An old church, now functioning as abarnand storehouse, providesa complex and ironic background to thescene's deliberate exposition. One might say that for Barry LyndonPart II begins and ends in a church:the beginningcast in a resplendentsocial and aesthetic symmetry, the ending reminiscent of his ruralbeginnings, yet furnishing a context for Barry'sonly deliberate moralact. Barry's refusal to fire on Bullingdon after the misfiring of hisopponent's pistol, a moment apparently structured by Kubrick toindicate Barry's capacity to act independent of a fortuitous turn ofchance, represents an instance within the film's narrative where theelaborate mechanics of social form embody a correspondinglysignificant moral and emotional content. Unfortunately and ironic-ally, such gestures are not enough to save Barry and his world.

iiiComplementing Kubrick's careful rendering of the two levels ofnarration and narrative structure, what could upon reflection betermed the disparities of film content in Barry Lyndon, is animpressive technical strategywhich binds the film into an aesthetic andphilosophical whole. Kubrick's use of camera and the film'scompositions, its mise-en-scene, and a musical score which develops abaroque regularity of beat and recurring cadences, produce agrandiosity of form which could redefine prevailing concepts of thefilm epic. Barry Lyndon shows many of the characteristics traditionalto a genre developed first by Griffith and the Italians, refined byEisenstein and Russian theories of epic montage, and exploited for itsfull commercial value through bravura technical feats by suchfilmmakers as Abel Gance and Cecil B. DeMille: a display ofinnovative visual and technical skills, impressiveformal compositions,rhythmic editing, and an actual or pseudo-historical ambience. Yet, asKubrick himself has noted, while such films historically resulted insignificant advancements in film technique and film language, theyrarely embodied content equal to their formal pretensions. In aninterview included in Joseph Gelmis' The Film Director as Superstar,Kubrick's comment that "Eisenstein is all form and no content,whereas Chaplin is content and no form," coupled with a statementfrom a later Sight and Sound (Spring, 1972) interview, articulates

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what I take to be his primary goal as a film artist and his actualachievement in Barry Lyndon: "Obviously, if you can combine styleand content, you have the best of all possible films."In Part I of Barry Lyndon, Kubrick enlarges the narrativedisparities of the film through the use of reversezooms which allows usto move into and away from both the absurd incongruities of Barry'sgradual rise and a complex mise-en-scene: which, in a series ofimpressivespatial and formalcompositions, blendwith the conceptualand transcend the temporal levels of narrative content. As the lovetryst involving Barry,Nora, and Quin develops, Kubrickzooms backfrom the particularsof film content (Barrychopping wood, Nora andQuin's hands, a pistol being preparedfor a duel) to assert arabesquelandscape compositions similar to those found in Gainsborough, alyrical ordering of Barry'srural world which dwarfs and engulfs thetemporal conflicts of that world. Because Barryfails to perceive suchbasic disparitiesbetween his ambitions and the expressive possibilitiesof his naturalcontext, he lacks the necessaryimagination to transcendhis own fate. In a larger historical sense, Kubrick suggests howpainting and film correspond as mediums wherein the artist reshapesavailable experience and escapes the tyranny of time. In subsequentscenes, Kubrick captures the aesthetics of 18th century warfarethrough a blending of reversezooms and strikinghorizontal composi-tions. While Barryfeels trapped within the confining rigorsof militarylife, Kubrick allows us to see what he has referred to as "a weirddisparity between the sheer visual and organizational beauty of thehistorical battles sufficiently far in the past, and their humanconsequences." The aesthetic of the zoom lens allows Kubrick tocapture closeup the triviality,absurdity,and tragedyof various humanentanglements, some of which collectively add up to what we callhistory, while from a distance it suggests a release possible onlythrough art and the integration of form and content.As Part I moves to Barry's ntrusion into the ranks of 18thcenturyaristocracy, Kubrick'scamera becomes more static, especially duringthose impressivecandlelit scenes made possible by a Zeiss still-cameralens, preferringto establish static compositions reminiscent of thoseglittering paintings by Adolf Menzel of Frederick the Great'sconcertsat Sanssouci. In particularduring Part II does Kubrick'scameraandcomposition first establish a static and extremely artificial tableaubefore cutting into a scene to explicate its content. Such a methodvisually suggests Barry Lyndon's unknowing entrapment in a worldwhich communicates through the dynamics of a rigid and decorativeROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW 47


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social language. As Barry appears to move smoothly through theformal gardens and artful social splendor of this milieu, perceivingneither its code nor moral emptiness, one cannot help but recallKubrick'searlier treatment of the Dax-Broulard relationship in Pathsof Glory;what Barrydoes not perceiveis his own diminution and thatof a society which only knows how to make for itself beautifullyattractive cages. One particular scene which stands out as pureKubrick shows Barry's first entrance into this environment ofaristocratic decadence when he meets for the first time the Chevalier.Kubrickbegins the scene in the Chevalier'spalatial apartment, from adistance looking down from a slight angle;as we observe the Chevaliersitting at his breakfast table, his back to the camera, engulfed by animmense and spacious room, we cannot help but be reminded of thatartful zoo inhabited by Bowman toward the conclusion of 2001. Barryfails to comprehend what Kubrick's cinematic art communicates:thatart and form without substance-without that vital urgency gainedthrough an innerstruggleto shapea vision of experience into revealingforms and models of reality-imprison rather than release humanperception.During Barry's fall in Part II, Kubrick moves him out of thecontext of candlelit comfort and social symmetrythrough a successiveseries of scenes in which the mise-en-scene declines in its artifice asBarry undergoes emotional and moral growth: (1) as Barry attacksBullingdon in full view of those he hopes to impress (and Kubrickbrings hand-held cinematic commotion into their midst), he offendsthat society's sense of form and decorum, not its moral outrage, andprecipitates his social downfall; (2) following Bryan'sdeath, the finalscene with Barryat Hackton Castle shows him being literally carriedout by two servants, but only after the cameradwells for a final look atthe symmetrical and ornate composition of a candlelit wall; (3) in aHogarthian setting of static and composed sloth, but invigorated bythe film's most extensive travelling shot, Bullingdon asserts hischallenge to a slumping Barry; (4) then, we move on to thatabandoned church for the climatic duel where Barry commits hissingle moral act; (5) and finally, we go to a small room at a local innwhere Barry, silently playing cards with his mother, must come toterms with his sorrow and tragedy. Kubrickconcludes BarryLyndon'sstory within the film's only freeze frame as the camera reveals Barryfrom behind(no doubt a one-legged double for Ryan O'Neal), artlesslysuspended in midair without either the support of good fortune orgood form. This series of frames, repeating and freezing the same



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image, holds still Barry's personal decline within time, whilesuggesting the larger tragedy of his world within a stunning work ofcinematic art.Kubrick's musical choices for Barry Lyndon, primarily baroquerather than purely classical, with the heavy grandeur of Handel's"Sarabande"providing the central musical theme, reinforce the film'scomplex weaving of levels of narrative and formal disparities. Thebrief selections from Bach and Vivaldi suggest minor harmonicprogressions common to the baroque, while the lighter pieces fromMozart and Schubert blend with the more simple and traditionalmelodies found in such choices as "Lilliburlero" and "BritishGrenadiers."Together these selections form a baroque whole whichsupports the film's visual mixture of lyrical simplicity and formalartifice, its narrative merger of the comic and tragic, an epicalgrandeur and a vanity fair. Barry Lyndon, to include its music,traverses shifts of style, mood, and concept which move from thesimple to the sublime, from the sublime to the ironic. And through thefilm's system of aesthetic analogy (to several forms of 17th, 18th, and19th century art and music), Kubrick provides Barry Lyndon anhistorical vision which both documents and universalizesthe end of anera.Kubrick'sinterpretation of the late 18thcenturysuggests a belief ina period's tragic entrapment within its own rational and mechanicalformalism. He embodies throughout Barry Lyndon that divorcebetween rational and emotional life common to that century'srelianceupon forms of reason and fears of individual imagination; to an agewhich obsessively sought to maintain the forms of its world at theexpense of its moral and emotional vitality; of an age which feared itsown mortality and found refuge in either the chimera of social ritual orthe uncomprehended forms of art. Kubrickimplies that only the artistsof the 18thcenturyescaped this plush and painted cage, not necessarilythrough the injection of profound content into their various artisticachievements, but because the genius of men like Bach and Mozart,Gainsborough and Hogarth, provides later epochs with that sense ofexhiliration which enriches the inner life and counters those forces ofstupidity and tyranny which, on all levels of social and psychologicallife, threaten the individual's capacity for profound experience.Kubrick, however, does not make films about artists, nor does heindulge in empty aesthetic performances (although if he did, his filmsprobably would still be notable). His films, and BarryLyndonextendsthis basic assertion to its fullest to date, deal with ironic, absurd,ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW 49


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touching, and philosophical disparities which find expression inhuman history and imagination through a myriad of forms and ritualactivities, visual and abstract structures, the shapes of societies andhistories, the struggles of individual consciousness and articulation.Kubrick's Barry Lyndon representsanother such form and structure,one visual and aural, but one which seeks to embody those principlesof disparity in a single work of cinematic art. The last scene of the filmexpresses both Kubrick's film intelligence and his personal vision:Interior, large room at Hackton Castle, long shot, static composition,large window left, with light flooding in, table to right with threepeople sitting and one standing, balanceand static spatial compositionsuggests general social-period content, but not a specific humancontent, music on soundtrack adapted from Schubert's "Piano Trio inE-Flat";cut to close-in view, no dialogue; to Lady Lyndon's slow andmethodical signing of bank drafts, her hesitation as Bullingdon, to herright, places before her another form to sign; camera concentratesmore on her face than the activity itself; cut to closeup of a bank draftmade out to Redmond Barry, with date at lower left corner of frameindicating the yearas 1789;to closeup of Lady Lyndon'sdistracted andsorrowful stare, and following a moment's hesitation and mutedemotion, she continues the ritual of affixing her signature to thedocuments; cut back to long shot, static composition as before, cut toblack; Handel's "Sarabande" heard on soundtrack as the film's end-titles begin.The above description contains several of the film's basicconcernsand points to an historical context beyond its period. By selecting 1789for the terminating date of the film's story (no such ending date existsin Thackeray), with its allusion to the French Revolution and thebeginning of a new age in Europe, Kubrick reminds us of both anhistorical and cinematic context. Historically, we witness a societytrapped within its own forms and rituals, its own folly and moralirrelevance; Kubrick's handling of this last scene suggests an era'sparticular content and struggle tragically lost in time, while the formsof that era remain frozen in art. In addition, Kubrick points beyondthis age to the Romantic (here the Schubert selection may besignificant) and Napoleonic eras in Europe. Yet, our perspectiveremains 20th century and cinematic, as today we can comprehend thepassing glories and tragicfailures of 19thcenturyheroic individualism.Perhaps, the film suggests, the disparities between different periods ofhuman history may not be disparities at all, but particularinstances ofa universal condition. As Kubrick historically points beyond one age



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to another, he likewise points beyond Barry Lyndon, the film, to hisown ambitious Napoleon film project.Disparity in Barry Lyndon represents something more than anarrative principle, but a way Kubrick undercuts and enlarges thenarrow logic of traditional film storytelling. Disparity in BarryLyndon stands for something more than a system of conceptualparadoxes, but a recognition of a universe of differences andalternatives, and therefore an appropriate and legitimate form ofperception for this century. Disparity in Barry LYndon representssomething more than cinematic grandiosity, but an instance ofcreative film intelligence discovering in the concept and logic ofdisparity a complexity and challenge equal to, if not beyond, its reach.

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